Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Gender Pay Gap

Here's a recording of the 'gender pay gap discussion' from yesterday's Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC 2.Now I know I'm biased, but if you ask me Stefan got to the heart of the issue and that's because of his hands on experience of fighting equal pay cases both in Scotland and elsewhere.As regular readers of the blog site know, the council employers in Scotland kept their employees in the dark for years and the trade unions were hopeless at enforcing their members rights to equal pay.In South Lanarkshire, for example, the trade unions actively discouraged their members from pursuing equal pay claims against the local Labour-run council.So the fight for equal pay is still very much work-in-progress and the real scandal is that so many people have had to fight for so long to establish their rights when the law is perfectly clear.

Lots of coverage in the news media today on the report from the widely respected Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) which highlights the ongoing pay gap between male and female jobs.

The IFS report shows that women in paid work, on average, receive 18% less per hour than their male colleagues.

The gender pay gaps smaller for women before they become mothers, but grows after the birth of a woman's first child to open up a mammoth 33% gap by the time the first child is 12 years of age.Part of the problem is that women's jobs tend to be concentrated at the bottom end of an employer's pay ladder - in North Lanarkshire Council, for example, the lowest paid jobs are all done mainly by women.

NLC Grade 1 - 98% women

NLC Grade 2 - 90% women

NLC Grade 3 - 77% women

NLC Grade 4 - 77% women

So while some progress has been made in recent years, thanks to Action 4 Equality Scotland rather than the trade unions it has to be said, the reality is that there's still a long way to go.

About Me

Mark is an independent consultant with a wide range of clients in the public, private and 'not for profit' sectors - both in the UK and Europe.
In a previous life, Mark spent 20 years as a senior trade union official - latterly as Unison's Head of Local Government and Chief Negotiator in Scotland. Contact Mark by e-mail at: markirvine@compuserve.com